I write about the Internet technologies and upstarts that are disrupting advertising and media faster than ever. I'm living this disruption, so I might as well write about it, too. I spent nine years as chief of BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau writing about the leading edge of technology and business, and I continue to do so for a variety of publications. Follow my posts here by clicking the "+ Follow" link under my name. You can also find me at my personal Web site RobHof.com, follow me on Twitter (robhof), Circle me on Google+, subscribe to me on Facebook, and email me (robert.hof@gmail.com).

The One-Second Rule: New Viewability Metric Exposes How Low Online Advertising Standards Still Are

That’s the logic behind today’s announcement of the blessing by an ad industry group of a new standard for viewable ad impressions. The Media Rating Council, which had been studying how to ensure consistent measurement of viewable impressions, today lifted a moratorium it had placed on the metric way back in November 2012 while it examined how to ensure the many ratings firms out there could come up with similar metrics using their various methods of calculating viewability.

The move does make sense, especially for the brand advertisers that have been keeping most of their budgets in television to date. It’s now widely known that at least a third and maybe more than half of online ads are never seen for a variety of reasons, from the ad appearing off the visible part of a screen to outright fraud, such as embedding an ad behind a pixel so it can’t be viewed but gets counted as an “impression.”

That couldn’t last, though it sure lasted many years longer than it should have. The new standard suggests that online ads can be credibly included on the same ad buyer spreadsheet as TV ads. “Practically speaking, it means that—as of today—for brand advertising, agencies can and will expect guarantees on viewable display impressions, with video to come soon after,” Sherrill Mane, senior VP of research, analytics and measurement at the online ad industry trade group IAB, said in a blog post. “This means that one of the major obstacles to being included in brand allocations has finally been removed.”

What’s still absurd about the situation is the appallingly low standard for viewability. For display ads, at least half the ad must be viewable for at least one second, while for video ads, it’s two seconds. That’s it. If it flashes by your prospective customer for a second or two, you’re on the hook to pay for that impression. The standard echoes Google'sGoogle's MRC-accredited Active View viewability metric, which it has been offering since last year.

Of course, you can argue that television ads aren’t much different, since you could be using the TV as a babysitter or grabbing a beer from the fridge while ads air unseen. But online ads need to do better than that to compete. And ad viewability online does matter. Kellogg found that a 40% improvement resulted in a 75% increase in sales.

But I still wonder if online ads will ever seriously take on television if they can’t offer at least close to the same impact as 3o-second spots. Some companies, such as true[X] media, contend that online ads will never steal significant budgets from television until they can offer the kind of (relatively) undivided attention TV ads do.

Needless to say, viewing half an ad for a second of two doesn’t come close to the impact of most TV ads. The only thing that will save advertising on the Internet, says true[X] CEO Joe Marchese, is the equivalent of the commercial break. Instead of impressions, viewable or not, says Marchese, “human attention should be the commodity.”

What’s more, implementing ad viewability standards on the publishing side will take a lot of time and effort, so it won’t have an impact overnight. That’s especially true in viewability of video ads. Despite efforts by YouTube and others to offer advertisers more TV-like ad buying methods, measurement firms still vary widely in their ability to provide accurate metrics, according to one new study by Brightroll and KelloggKellogg. As a result, the video ad viewability metric won’t roll out until June.

No doubt the new ad viewability metric will be a significant step forward. It just seems unlikely to be enough.

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Interesting article, Robert. While it’s true we can all agree there’s no point to an ad that no one sees, I think brands need to be taking it one step farther and recognizing there’s no point to an ad that isn’t driving sales. There are of course some vendors that are primarily concerned with eyeballs and tying the industry to CPM, or other such metrics that don’t truly account for sales and revenue, but for most marketers the real goal is not just views – it’s dollars. Also, at this point the majority of marketers are aware that you can’t separate campaign channels into individual efforts, but instead need to measure the impact each one has on the others. Assuming brands are implementing multi-channel campaigns, they need to be measuring the effect the collective campaign has on ROI, not the number of people that can be confirmed as having seen each piece of the puzzle.

Totally disagree Jeff. If a publisher gives and advertiser quality consumer attention, why should they be help responsible if the consumer doesn’t by the product. Maybe the product is not good. Maybe the creative was bad. Holding publishers responsible for ROI of a brand leads to horrible conflicts of interest and a tough position on not being able to depend on advertiser revenue for the value they can deliver.